Evil Will Weep Over The Lands

Akio Uchiha is sometimes called "vampiral." He has eyebrows which are solid on the inside part of his face and become thinner and taper of as they spread to the outside part of his forehead, forming an arch that would make one think that he waxed daily. His eyes could instill a deep insecurity into one who had not met the glistening black orbs before, and they almost seemed to reach into one's soul. They had a faint point, or corner on the bottom inside part of his eye and on the upper outside part of the eye, creating an almost rhombus-like shape. His sclera were a milky white, with tiny insignificant veins able to be seen running through them, but which became less and less dense as they neared his iris. The iris of Akio was a deep color of onyx, which seemed to have millions of layers of ridges and slightly different shades deep within the eye which made him look so intimidating. Or beautiful. Whichever viewpoint you had on it, that was the focal point of Akio's face, the point that the rest of his features seemed to point to.

His nose was a bit shorter, though not entirely noticeably so, than the average person. He had a low bridge, and the tip came to an odd, but masculine point that was angled just enough to see the bottom part of Akio's nostrils if one stood at eye level. His lips were rather thin and elongated, pronouncing each facial expression he made, ten-fold. One could often see the curl in his smile as a mocking threat, or as a comical point to poke fun at. Take a guess which one his enemies saw. Below his mouth, Akio's jaw was rather angular. One could find and point out the angle that appeared underneath his ears, which came together in a pronounced pointed chin. His ears were rather large and one of the most vampire-like of his features; with a round bottom, they curled into a point which was partially obscured by his ears most of the time. Most often, Akio's hair was gently and loosely pulled back, with naught but its weight holding it in place. At the forehead, the bangs were parted and curled around his face, in the upper parts sticking out, which pronounced his face to onlookers. His skin was a pale color that seemed like it rejected the sun at all costs, reflecting brightly, but not sickly, back at the world.

The night sky allowed for the glistening in Akio’s eyes to be seen through the slits in his ANBU mask, as he gazed at his team. They were two men and a woman, and as per protocol, they did not know one another’s identities. They could be brothers for all they knew, only to find out later, on the battlefield when they revealed their techniques. Only Akio knew the identities of these brave Shinobi, as per his title. He was, in fact, the ANBU captain of Kumogakure. He had long since been considered “on par” with his beloved Raikage, being an S-Rank, but it was his own preference to take a less glorifying position such as his own. He was not treated as a hero, and was not looked up to among the villagers. He preferred it this way, to him it was the glory of being a member of the village’s ANBU forces. The team of four seemed near identical in their outfits, with similar but varying masks decorated in tribal-styled vinyls, with the base color being a boney white, while the details could be seen as a crimson red. They wore robes that covered every inch of their body, all the way down to their ankles. The difference was, as Captain of the ANBU and the current commander on this mission, Akio’s robe was red, while the others’ could be seen to be white.

He stood crouched under a sandstone overhang, with the desert sand beneath his feet in the desert of the Land of Wind. The Uchiha now turned his eyes to the mission at hand. He was to infiltrate a foreign enemy camp deployed by Konohagakure and replace a message sent by courier to the commander of the operation by the Hokage with a fake message. The envelope with the parchment tucked inside could be felt pressed against his behind in a pocket beneath his robes. He thought long and hard, and for a brief moment, a thought flashed before his mind. It was dispelled quickly, but the image of his siblings who were part of Konohagakure’s Shinobi force. But they were all adults in their low 30s... they could make their own decisions, and they had decided to stay... but it was against protocol to feel emotion for the enemy, whether family or not. Akio was just a soldier, born to bid to and protect his king, his Raikage. He had no other choice. The closest and furthest sentry from the camp was nearly 50 yards away. No doubt it was a sensory ninja, but the ANBU team had hidden and muffled their chakra miles back. They were to be undetected, only permitted to eliminate some sentries if need be. The enemy would not be allowed suspicion, no hint or clue of what was to occur.

Akio now observed the target. Sentries were lain in 6 layers, each about 100 yards closer to the enemy camp than the other. Posted in 150 yard intervals in each layer of sentries were posted two sentries. Each layer walked in opposite directions from the two which were on either side of them, so that the outter-most layer walked in a clock-wise direction, while the next walked in a clock-wise direction, both centered on the camp, while the others followed the same pattern. The ANBU commander knew they had the leeway to kill no more than 10 Shinobi, and only that many because of the massive size of the camp, that such a small number going missing would go nearly unnoticed. The team had watched for nearly four hours, and the enemy did not seem to change shifts. It was smart. They probably would not change shifts until dawn, so as to give the minimal amount of opportunities for enemy to catch them unawares. The commander’s right arm rose and he extended his index finger to the two men. He then extended his middle finger against his index finger, with his arm parallel to his body, and the portion from his shoulder and elbow parallel to the ground. His forearm portion was pointed upwards and perpendicular to the ground and the rest of his arm forming a right angle. He then extended his arm in a straight form towards the group of sentries Southeast of their current position, 150 yards away from the group which was just passing them. Suddenly Akio no longer heard their breath and he knew they had dispersed, leaving him and the female ANBU in their current position.

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The men had just departed for their main assignment of the mission. It was up to those two to gain information on where to find the commander of the Konohagakure Shinobi forces, particularly in the form of a document, however the verbal info could do if need be. Until then, Akio and the woman were to stealthily pass each layer of sentries. Akio focused for a moment before he realized that he was at a complete loss in how to pass every layer without being caught, in this open desert. He could tell that these Shinobi were not particularly strong, just by their build and the way they carried themselves, not to mention their youth, but he knew that they would have an easy and reliable way to sound the alarm. He turned to look at the female ANBU who was with him, and she seemed to immediately grasp his meaning. He was giving her the ‘ok’ to take the initiative and find a way past these men. Akio had picked her for this mission for a very particular reason. It was she who was suppressing the chakra of the four ANBU, and she was perhaps the most skilled in all of Kumogakure at infiltration. She stared in the direction of a pair of sentries who were on their rounds, moving in the general direction of she and Akio, and as Akio watched her, her eye-lids ever-so-slightly fluttered. She had a plan.

Akio had learned to trust in the members he picked in missions, so he simply nodded and moved behind the woman. At this point he would have instinctively activated Sharingan to better see in the dark, but if he wanted to keep his chakra suppressed and hidden, he knew it was better not to. The woman reached up to the sandstone overhang a picked a piece off, only about the size of a quarter. She hurled this piece of sandstone into the dense night, until Akio heard a thud and a squeal that told him she had hit an animal. By the squeal he could tell it was a small mammal, most likely a kangaroo rat. He saw the two sentries immediately sprint in the direction of the squal, and at that moment, the two ANBU were mobile, moving at extreme speeds, yet their movements were so completely refined that they didn’t even leave a footprint in the sand. By using cacti and in one case, a large rock, the two had managed to slip past the first four layers of sentries. There were just two more left, and Akio could tell they were more closely spaced than the others. Smart. He pondered for the slightest second while hidden in the cover of a large Desert Senna, a yellow flowering shrub that thrived in this sort of climate.

Akio put his arm up in a tight 90 degree angle, parallel to his body with his fingertips pointing skyward to show the femal ANBU that he would now re-take the lead of the two of them. He’d lead them past these two layers. These Shinobi were similar to the others they had seen, young, seemingly low-ranked and inexperience, and hardly paying the slightest attention to their surroundings. Akio took that to his advantage, and he let the closest pair of sentries pass, and as they began to reach a distance of approximately 30 yards, away, facing away from him, he leisurely slipped through this layer, and the next, which had seemingly stopped for a bathroom break. Akio was finally within perimeter of the camp, where being caught meant they were completely surrounded. Akio raised his ANBU mask just enough to expose his mouth, and noticed the woman turned her head with a bit of exaggeration, obviously because it was against regulation for her to know his identity. The Uchiha brought his hand to his lips and began to whistle, a bird call particularly. It was completely identical to the singing of a forest bird called a Woodfinch. He had chosen this call because it was not a desert bird and the two men who were to gather intel would recognize this and recognize the location of Akio and woman, and because it was a forest bird, a sound that Konohagakure Shinobi would be used to hearing, so that it both stood out to his comrades and went unnoticed by the enemy.

The two were not stationary for more than five minutes before they rendezvoused with their comrades, who were for some reason now dressed in Konohagakure attire. The taller one handed Akio a rolled up scroll which when he opened, showed somewhat of a map or layout of the camp. It showed the quarters, the officer war room, the mess hall, the armory, the infirmary, and anything else that a small army could need. As small as the army was, it was still an army, and could easily wipe the floor with the four ANBU. As Akio looked at the layout of the camp it dawned on him just how tremendously large the camp truly was. He would have been amazed were it not so gut-wrenching. It was easily as large as the merchant district back home, which was nearly a quarter of a mile in diameter. Akio was a good 300 yards away from his target: The officers’ war room. He was fairly confident that there would be no one inside at this time a night, and most of the Shinobi were asleep barring those who were on guard duty or drinking. It was typical for an army as large, even if it were small compared to other armies, as this one to be fairly unorganized and rowdy. There were drunk men fighting, bards singing, and overall disarray throughout the entire camp. Akio rolled the scroll back up and signaled for the two men to return to their rendezvous point underneath the sandstone overhang to wait for their comrades.

Akio weaved him and the woman through and behind tents, making sure to not to be too noisy, but not overly cautious either because of the disarray of the camp. The two ANBU made it to their target with no encounters, barring a particularly drunk and beaten up soldier who caught glimpse of them; he seemed to be out of his right mind and completely disregarded the two of them, as if they were a figment of his imagination. Then again, he looked as if he was beaten and drunk enough to believe that they were. Just as Akio began to concentrate on listening to the inside of the tent to be sure there was no presence on the inside, he was interrupted.

He heard a large explosion in the direction that the other two men had gone, and the female ANBU’s eyes widened as she whispered to him that they were no longer allowing her to suppress her chakra. It meant they were caught. Before thinking, Akio gave the female the false orders and ordered her to do the swap and remained hidden. She began to protest, but Akio had torn off into the direction of the other two at break-neck speeds. He observed that the inside of the camp seemed not to notice anything, and it occurred to him that they were used to hearing explosions like this at night, when the men were drunk... they were a camp full of Shinobi after all. However he had the suspicion that the sentries would not so easily disregard it. At least the ones which were immediately nearby. He was near their location, he could tell, and his feet were stomping at insane speeds that any normal Shinobi would not be able to see, let alone keep up with. This was his mastery of Swift Release showing, an advanced nature which allowed him to outrun even the Raikage’s Lightning Release Armour, though with only the added speed, and not the other benefits that a master of Lightning Release Armour would experience.

When Akio arrived, his Sharingan was instinctively activated, and he saw two bodies on the ground as well as five Shinobi in mid-combat. Were it not for his Sharingan, it would be impossible for him to discern the bodies, but such a Doujutsu, and a fully matured one at that, gave him near crystal clear sight in the blackness of the night, and his heart sunk in dismay as he noticed one of the bodies was the taller ANBU who had given Akio the layout of the camp just moments before. Before completely stopping, the Uchiha’s hand was plunged inside his robes, and, still using the Swift Release to move his body at extreme speeds, withdrew three kunai; one on his index finger, one on his middle, and one on his ring finger. His arm slung across his body thrice, each was accompanied with a satisfying thud and groan which indicated to him that they had hit their marks. At that exact moment, just as the male ANBU had killed one of the two remaining enemies, a body flashed across the face of Akio and seconds later he recognized the female ANBU on top of the last of the enemies who now had a broken neck.

The mission was nearly complete. Kumogakure ANBU used a Ninjutsu to incinerate their body upon death so as to eliminate all traces of information and evidence from the scene. As such, the body of the Kumogakure ANBU member now burst into flame and was reduced to naught but ash. Akio stood in a moment of silence to honor the Shinobi while the two remaining ANBU smoothed over the desert sand in the area with Wind Release to eliminate a scuffle. Akio allowed his chakra to be re-hidden and re-suppressed by the female, and ordered the two of them to each carry two bodies out with them, while Akio picked two of his own. He tied them together with a long piece of wire which was previously stored in the pouch on his left hip beneath his ANBU robes, and picked the bundle up, slinging it onto his back. The new goal of the trio was to exit undetected, and once he left range of the camp, to eliminate the bodies, destroying what was hopefully that last bit of evidence.

Mission Status: Complete. Success? Or Fail? (END)